


Exempt

by justanotherwritingaddict



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drama, F/F, F/M, Gen, Geniuses, M/M, Multi, Other, Parent!lock, teenage daughter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 22:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9093697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherwritingaddict/pseuds/justanotherwritingaddict
Summary: Peregrine Marsden Holmes-Watson isn't your typical teenager. Raised by her dads since her birth, she has had every opportunity to pick up on the unusual practices of her family. And pick up on them she has. The only problem? She's picked up on the enemies, too.





	

“Peregrine,” I heard Dad yell, “Sherlock wants you in the living room, darling!”  
“Okay, Dad!” I called back, “I’ll be right down, just a moment!”  
I turned off my microscope and grabbed my phone from the desk next to me, you never know with Sherlock, how much time you’ll have to prepare anything if he wants you somewhere. I got up from my desk and ran down the hall, turning into the living room where flats 221B and 221C had been conjoined before I was born. Dad- John- claims that Mrs. Hudson would’ve let anyone do the same renovation, but I suspect she has a bit of a soft spot for my parents, in all reality.  
When I got to the living room, Sherlock was waiting, already dressed in his going out clothes, his tall coat and blue scarf, and was pacing impatiently. When I entered the room, he spun to look at me, appeared pleased, and tossed me my coat. I could feel that there was some sort of case file in the deep inner pocket, and that was my cue to follow him. I swung the coat around my shoulders and ran to catch up with Sherlock, who was already down the stairs and probably hailing a cab, and turned to call to John.  
“Da! We’re going out, I’ll text you if we’ll be home for dinner!” I rushed out the door, making sure I had my keys, phone, wallet, and toolkit with m, and heard Dad call some sort of resigned response after us. Something about milk. I deleted it.  
Sherlock managed to get a cab, and we swung into the back seat rather awkwardly. Dad always says I favor his husband more, with my long limbs and high cheekbones, but the blonde hair rather throws people for a loop sometimes. John and Sherlock are the only ones who know I dye it. And Mrs. Hudson and Molly. Maybe uncle Greg, though I’m not sure. Mycroft notices, but doesn’t care. So long as I’m not ‘disappearing off the face of the continent’ I guess.  
I pulled out the case file from my inside pocket and spread it on my lap, assuming that Sherlock had already read it. I knew he hadn’t been there yet, because if he had, he would’ve just texted me from the crime scene. Also, from the looks of it, this case was from the west end, where it’d been raining, and he was dry. So, we’d see the scene together. Fantastic. I loved it when we did that.  
I scanned the file. Double suicide. A young couple, twenty and twenty one, both women. Found hung from the ceiling of their bedroom by their landlord this morning at ten a.m. Fascinating.  
We pulled up to the flat, and I snapped on a pair of gloves. Sherlock did the same, and we exited the cab in an acceptably dramatic fashion, coats swirling and faces set. Donovan let us in the gate with a scowl, and we both did as was our custom, to ignore her. Lestrade met us at the front door and led us in, passing Anderson on the way. Sherlock and I exchanged exasperated glances. Anderson never left the evidence alone. Bugger. I saw him frown at me as he left, muttering something about me being a poor kid. I’d half a mind to go back and beat his sorry arse, but I restrained myself, seeing as Sherlock managed to do so as well, leading me with a grimace. We were of one mind about Anderson. He was a bloody twat.  
Nodding at Lestrade, I saw that he had bags under his eyes (Mycroft would be unhappy), and was carrying a double shot espresso. I smiled slightly. No one else in this place drank proper black coffee, and it was a disgrace. He nodded back at me, and as we came to the room of the suicides, I hung back, content to allow Sherlock to make his observations before I got in his way.  
“What makes you suspicious about this?” I inquired to Lestrade quietly, watching as Sherlock went about his business.  
“You’ll probably see it right away,” he replied, motioning to the room with his coffee cup, “But I don’t see how they could’ve managed it. There’s no chair or stool or ottoman to stand on, except the one with the muddy boot prints on it in the corner,” I opened my mouth to ask something, but he beat me to it, “Yes, we matched them to the taller woman. The redhead. But how did the stool get over to the corner after they died?”  
“The other woman couldn’t’ve moved it,” I realized, “Because then how did she hang herself?”  
“Exactly,” he agreed, “I can’t make heads or tails of it!” he looked frustrated, “But trust you and Sherlock to solve it like it’s childsplay.” He grunted, and I gave a thin lipped smile before turning my attention to Sherlock, who was approaching us.  
“Solved it yet?” I joked, and he rolled his eyes. Then, he turned to Lestrade.  
“Greg (Mycroft insisted he learned the DI’s name after they got married), find the dog.”  
“Dog?” he asked, oblivious, “What dog?”  
“Don’t be daft, Detective Inspector!” Sherlock grouched, “The women are covered in dog hair. Some sort of chihuahua, I should think.”  
Lestrade looked blown away, and Sherlock looked pleased, and I just ignored them and went into the room. Careful not to disturb anything, I walked over to where the bodies hung. My stomach turned a bit, but I held it down. Contrary to what they tell you, it never gets any less shocking to see the freshly dead. Trust me.  
I examined the women, crouching to see the soles of their shoes, which did, indeed match with the prints on the ottoman in the corner, upon inspection. I frowned, noticing that the backs of the heels had more mud on them than the soles, and then I straightened. The women did in fact have hair on their pants, though I couldn’t identify it as fast as Sherlock could. Suddenly, I squinted and cocked my head. Only the redhead had hair on her pants. I moved to look at the other woman, and then took out the file. Looking at their faces, I could see the similarities. But they were different women, sure enough. This one had died hair, the roots beginning to show though. The woman in the picture was natural.  
I spun to look at the bed. It had been moved. Recently. The indentions from where it was are still deep, and it hasn’t indented in the new carpet space yet. A few hours ago, at most. I dropped to my hands and knees and peered underneath, seeing that the high headboard was in fact concealing the door to something. A closet, probably.  
“Greg!” I called, urgently, “Come help me move this bed. There’s someone alive in here!”  
The room was swarmed in a second, Greg, Sherlock, and a few new assistants rushing in to help me. They slid the bed slightly, and I pushed pant to pry the door open. It was locked.  
“Bloody hell!” exclaimed one of the men, a few years older than me, maybe, “A closet!”  
“Fantastic observation!” I snapped, pulling a lockpick from my pocket and fiddling with the lock, “Call an ambulance, one of you bleeding idiots!”  
They snapped at attention at that, rushing about and shouting, and as I managed to get the door open, Sherlock was the only one calmly there to help me manage this crisis. He grabbed a sheet from one of the nearby people, snapping at them when they hesitated, and threw it over the dead bodies. Inside the closet, a small blonde woman lay, bloody and curled into a ball, gagged and tied.  
“Bloody…” I trailed off, before reaching forward. The woman flinched away and tried to scream, but I managed to grab her by the wrists. “Come on then!” I yelled at the dumbstruck paramedics, who snapped out of it and took the woman from me. I turned to Lestrade, who was on the phone with someone or other, looking panicked. “Search the house!” I instructed him, and he nodded.  
“On it.”  
“Good.” I turned to Sherlock, who was once again examining the bodies. He looked at the fake blonde. Looking at her now, I could see that she had been dead far longer than the redhead, based on the bruising patterns around her neck. The blood had settled more than once.  
“What turned you on to the fact that the blonde wasn’t the real woman? The lack of dog hair or the bad dye job?” he asked, looking pensive.  
“Neither,” I responded, “Look at the redhead. She’s got a half-heart tattoo on her right wrist. This blonde doesn’t.”  
“Could be from a past relationship,” he posed, but I shook my head.  
“The initials are T.W. Theresa Williams. Not exactly a common set, there.”  
“Well, that’s what I get for not reading the case file, I suppose,” he sighed, “Bloody hell, you’re like him.”  
“Who?” It was my turn to be confused.  
“John,” he looked torn between pride and sadness, “We had a motto, once. Did you know?”  
“No?”  
“Sherlock Holmes will solve your murder,” he recited with a wry smile, “but John Watson will save your life.”  
“Oh.”  
“Yes.”  
We sat for a moment, looking at the bodies, before he posed another question. “How did you know about the closet?”  
I grinned at him, “No one puts their bed facing away from a window like that, Sherlock.” He arched an eyebrow, and I conceded with a sigh. “Darcy has a house on this street. I assumed that the floorplan was the same. Therefore, closet. And that’s not cheating-” I began with a grin.  
“That’s thinking, I know, I know,” he gave me a rare, small, smile, “I taught you that, little girl.”  
“If you call me little girl I’ll call you daddy,” I said, “So watch it, mister.”  
He shook his head and we were suddenly sobered into silence.  
“She was dragged here sometime between 6 and 10 am this morning,” he pointed out, “Her clothes aren’t wet, but the mud on her shoes…” his sentence trailed of, because he knew that I understood his train of thought. I nodded.  
“I wonder where they got the fake body? The people who did it? She’s been dead a while.”  
“I just wonder how they did it,” Sherlock said, cocking his head to the left.  
“She was grabbed from behind, I should think,” I snapped my fingers as something came to me, “The mailbox! It was open, and the papers were wet! She was out getting the mail when they grabbed her. She must’ve been killed here, though, the blood only settled once.”  
“Not strangulation, not blunt force trauma, not likely poison, but possible,” he mused, walking around the body. “We’ll need an autopsy to know for sure,” he said, with growing certainty, “but I’m quite sure that if we strip this woman of her articles of clothing, we’ll find that her spinal column has been severed. Heads don’t do that,” he motioned to the angle of her neck, “Naturally. Not even with broken necks.”  
I cocked my head to one side, trying and failing to see what he saw, until he reached forward and pulled up her hair in the back. I saw a thin red line at the base of her neck and furrowed my brow.  
“Why the bloody hell would you do it like that?” I said, incredulously, “There are so many other ways…” I trailed off, my voice catching in my throat, and reached up myself, pulled her collar down. It was a smiley face, grotesquely carved into her flesh. I felt myself freeze, and Sherlock go stiff next to me.  
“What?” my voice was a raspy whisper. I’d seen mutilated bodies before, but somehow this was far more sinister. I turned to look at Sherlock, and saw that his eyes were rapidly scanning the windows in front of us for something. Obviously not finding it, he clenched his teeth and reached slowly for his belt. I tensed further.  
“Lestrade?” I called slowly, letting my hand fall from the body, but Sherlock turned abruptly and pulled his gun to point it at the window.  
“No!” I flinched, and his eyes darted to me, “Greg, if you love my brother, you won’t come into this room! Stay in the hall! Call him! Tell him that the captives must be released!”  
“Sherlock,” Lestrade began, “wha-” I heard his footsteps coming closer, and Sherlock leapt forward in a panic.  
“Goddammit Greg! For once in your bloody miserable life, do exactly as I tell you. Take out your fucking phone, call my brother, and tell him that the captives must be released, do you understand? Answer me, damn it! This is important!”  
My eyes flicked between Sherlock and the door, and as I heard Greg stop and pull out his phone with a string of grumbled curses, Sherlock stepped closer to me, pulling in front of him and wrapping me in his coat. I leaned into the touch, pulling myself together from my shock. Something was happening, and I needed my full facilities for whatever it was.  
I heard the phone ringing in the hall, and Mycroft answered almost immediately. Lestrade was the only one who he did that for. Husband perks, I guess. Well, I suppose that if Dad or I called him, he might do the same, but it’d been so long since I’d had to do that, I wasn’t sure. I heard Lestrade mumble something into the phone, and Mycroft yell something back. The next thing I knew, Sherlock was tackling us into the hallway. We both instinctively rolled away from the door towards the stairs, and Lestrade was no longer acting like we were crazy. Instead, he helped us up and inspected me for damage. I pulled away, turning to find Sherlock pointing a gun at Lestrade. I stepped out of the way. I wasn’t an idiot.  
Lestrade held up his hands and said something that almost made me fall over. “Κυψέλη (pronounced kypséli)”  
I choked on air and Sherlock lowered his gun, releasing a breath. Then, he turned to look at me, where I was standing with my back to the wall, shaking lightly. His cold frown dropped, and he stepped closer to me.  
“Peregrine,” he said softly, trying to soothe me, “Everything will be okay. Nothing bad will happen. It could just be a false alarm. Remember when we had a false alarm when you were little?”  
I nodded, and my shaking stopped as I straightened myself, taking deep breaths as I recalled the experience. The dads and I had been walking downtown, Dad and I having gone to pick up Sherlock from a crime scene because he and Anderson had gotten into a fight, leaving Sherlock in a sour mood and Anderson with a broken nose. I remember Dad insisting that we walk, rather than get a cab, because we were in a good neighborhood and Sherlock needed to cool down. Dad said nothing for a long time, and I just skipped between them, trying to figure out why Sherlock was so upset.

“Why would you even bother going after Anderson?” Dad finally burst out, “He’s such a twat-” his gaze flicked to me with a wince at his language, but I pretended not to notice (he should have known better, there is nothing that I don’t notice), “Why Sherlock? He’s not worth it!”  
Sherlock said nothing for a long time, and then he spoke. And I remember every word.  
“John, there are very few people in this world that I care about as deeply as I care about you. Only one, in fact. And your disappointment, no matter how crushing, is well worth the effort of protecting her from the same ridicule that I faced as a child, I’m afraid.”  
Dad was silent and shocked for a moment before I decided to break the silence.  
“You know, Sherlock, you can’t punch every twat in the face. There are too many!” I nodded at my statement, before leaning into Sherlock and whispering conspiratorially, “But sometimes you have to. For the greater good.”  
Both of my parents looked at me in shock for a moment before Sherlock cracked an amused smile and lifted me off the ground.  
“Hello!” I exclaimed, placing my chubby hands on the sides of his face and nuzzling his nose with mine. He chuckled and nuzzled me back, before pulling back to study me. I grinned sloppily.  
“Hello, Peregrine. You really are a remarkable child, did you know?”  
“So I’ve been told!” I exclaimed, clinging to his front. He laughed and tucked me into his coat, and John snapped out of his shock.  
“Don’t encourage her swearing!” he reprimanded, frowning at the both of us, even though his eyes sparkled with an emotion I couldn’t quite identify. Pride? Happiness maybe?  
“They’re just words!” I said, “It’s not like I’m murdering someone!” I looked up at Sherlock, and felt his chuckle rumble beneath me, “I couldn’t!” I continued, burrowing into Sherlock’s suit jacket as his arms wrapped around me, “Sherlock would know it was me immediately! He’s magic!”  
Sherlock choked his laughter to a halt and looked at me incredulously, and now it was Dad’s turn to laugh.  
“What?” sputtered Sherlock, “Peregrine, I’m not magic! Don’t say things like that! You know it’s all fact based!”  
“Well,” I pointed out, “I’ve never seen it happen, Sherlock! And you say all the time that people believe something that they cannot explain or comprehend is magic.” My reasoning was solid, and Sherlock sputtered. He stopped in his tracks.  
“Sherlock? What are you-” Dad chased after Sherlock, who had spun around and was walking briskly in the direction from which we’d come.  
“I’ll not have my child believe in magic, John!”  
“She doesn’t really, Sherlock!” he exclaimed, catching his husband’s arm, “She just wants you to bring her on a case!”  
Sherlock stopped and looked down at me in shock, gaping like a fish. I giggled and poked his face.  
“I’ve just been played by a four year old!” he exclaimed, pouting.  
“It’s all that sentiment,” agreed Dad with a grin, taking me from Sherlock and setting me down at their feet, where I toddled around a bit, frustrated with my short legs. Damn transport.  
“I’m still brilliant, right?” pouted Sherlock, looking sullen.  
Dad laughed and ran his fingers through Sherlock’s curly mane, “Of course, love,” he looked down at me and winked, “Always. But you should be proud of her!” Sherlock crossed his arms and pouted.  
“Oh come on,” Dad rolled his eyes, “Don’t be sullen. You’ve just created a child who can manipulate the smartest person in the world!” Sherlock raised his eyes and then looked back down at me.  
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” he looked pleased with himself and crouched down to look at me, taking both of my small chubby hands in his own long spindly and cold ones. His eyes sparkled with pride, and I gurgled in pleasure at him. “You’re a genius, Peregrine! Aren’t you?”  
“Yes!” I exclaimed, clapping and losing my balance slightly before being caught by Sherlock again, “I am a genius, just like Sherlock!”  
“Yes, just like Sherlock,” he agreed, smiling. I shook my head, and he frowned, cocking his head to the left in question.  
“Just like me,” I corrected, “Don’t speak about yourself in the third person, Sherlock, it’s improper.”  
Sherlock just laughed and nodded, standing up, but not all the way, so that he could still my hands. Dad went to my other side and took my other hand, and we turned around and headed for home. It was only a few more blocks, and as we turned onto Baker Street, Sherlock looked at Dad and then at me.  
“What if I found a case that Peregrine could accompany me on?” he proposed. Dad bristled, but Sherlock pushed on, “No, no, hear me out, Love,” that should have tipped Dad off that Sherlock was about to manipulate him, as Sherlock never used pet names, “I want to begin teaching her deduction. I have to start soon, as she’s getting bored with the piano and she doesn’t like chess, and it would be low danger, I promise! A seven, at most! A burglary!”  
“A Seven?” exclaimed Dad, “No! She’s not even seven!”  
“It won’t be dangerous, John,” Sherlock assured, “But I won’t have my daughter begin with an uninteresting case! It’ll stagnate her interest!”  
“It will most certainly-” Dad choked to a halt as we came to the front door, and Sherlock froze . I looked between them and then up at the door, which I noticed had had the lock smashed in. Scrawled just under the 221B was a message.  
Miss Me?  
Before I knew it, Mycroft had been called, and Dad and I had been bundled into the back of a black tinted car that was driven by a man who knew the codeword. Κυψέλη.  
They’d taught it to me when I was young, and told me that if there was ever an emergency, I wasn’t to trust anyone who didn’t know the word. It’d been imprinted into me. It meant beehive in greek. I had also been told that if anyone ever said the words ‘the captives must be released’ that it was an emergency.  
I don’t remember much about the car ride, but I know that when we got to Mycroft’s house, Irene, Molly, Mrs. Hudson, Dad, Lestrade, and I were gathered into a room to wait for Sherlock and Mycroft. I remember Dad shaking and arguing with the men who brought us there because they wouldn’t let him leave to go look for Sherlock, and Molly taking me onto her lap next to Irene. Mrs. Hudson made us all tea. How British we are.  
A few hours later, Sherlock and Mycroft showed up, looking haggard, and Dad nearly cried. We stayed with Mycroft for a few weeks until our flat was repaired. Apparently some vandals had decided to use a detail from some old case to freak my dads out, and they had been apprehended and were facing life in jail.  
We went back to 221B-C after that, and nothing was said about it after the fact. 

And now it was happening again. Except this time, I was old enough to understand. And I was terrified.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me with suggestions, and keep in mind that I don't have all the facts perfectly right(:


End file.
